“Your certificate, which is equivalent to a degree,
Lettie! Oh, my child, not a man living will speak to the girls. They will never be married, Lettie; they will be old maids to the end of the chapter. It is fearful to think of it!”
“Well, they don’t actually take a degree, because it is not allowed,” said Lettie; “but they work for it, and they get the honor.”
“Worse and worse,” cried Mrs. Chetwynd. “You see how sternly the men disapprove of this fearful step on the part of modern women.”
Letitia suppressed a short sigh.
“The girls are modern, and nothing will make them anything else,” she said.
“And yet, my dear, they are the reverse of fashionable.”
“Oh, Aunt Helen, I think fashionable women are going out.”
“Going out, my dear! What can you mean?”
“I really do think so; there will be fewer and fewer as time goes on. We are so terribly earnest now, we have no time to think of mere ornamentation.”